The 5 Steps Left to Take
by eywritereditor
Summary: Emma Swan is a distinguished faculty member at Vickers College. Regina Mills has retired from her stint as mayor. The two clash, then sparks ignite, at Emma's 6-week summer fiction and poetry master class. Both women will be forever changed after meeting the other. Rated M for adult themes and sexual content. FF AU. Literary. Major character death. Reader discretion advised.
1. Chapter 1

**Pages from Emma's confession:**

 _I am going to tell you how this story ends. Maybe because of that, you will put the pages down, lips curling like the pencil shavings next to my handwritten copy. That is fine._

 _If you stop reading now, you are probably here to interrogate my story, to wring answers from it, to find fault in it. Or you are reading this to set fire to it and subsequently fire me. Maybe you will even claim to read what I wrote, the way most claim to read college policy._

 _But those of you who continue past the spoiled ending, the second person point of view, and the floral sentences at which some balk and to which some say secured me tenure (a black hole within a black hole, let me tell you) ...well then, you have probably heard of Regina, knew someone like her, or you wish you did. Maybe you keep reading because you know me. But I doubt it._

 _I am a cobwebbed corner office. I am reading glasses sliding down a thin nose. A face hidden behind too-long, split-ended blonde hair. I have failed to stand out for many years now, so I may as well be invisible._

 _I used to be words. I used to be colors. Then I became the lack of both. Later, in the dim of it all-and this is the part you were waiting for-yes, I became Regina's._

 _Now, I am finding words again like diamonds spilled in a third-world village. But these words do not feel like mine. My fingers did not feel the pencil when the lawyers advised I write down my story, so they could edit it to pieces._

 _No. When I completed my MFA some twenty-odd years ago, I still wrote of happy endings, of saviors, and Never-never Land. Maybe if the melancholy had caught me earlier, the way it did my colleagues, I would have ended up at your University of Iowa, your Sarah Lawrence, your Ivy League corridors dusty with famous fingerprints. Instead, I had my burst of fame before I could appreciate it, then fate took me to Vickers College in Maine._

 _It was here that Regina came to me. It was here she reminded me of the way I used to write, the way I once saw the world. It was here she wrote her capstone work, "The 5 Steps Left to Take."_

 _And it was here that she died._

 **Pages from Regina's capstone:**

THE BACKSTORY:

After tenure, routine must have tugged at Emma Swan with such soft tendrils that she sunk into it without any real sense of alarm. Perhaps she surrendered to routine on purpose. Either way, by the time she realized how colorless her world had become, she'd already disappeared into the dark. The vacuum of student needs and collegial expectations sucked all the wind from her little lungs.

I knew it as soon as I tracked her down on the Internet to where her picture floated among the rest of the Vickers faculty headshots. I compared the grimace she wore there to the textured, toothy smile on the back of each of the fantasy-world romance novels she'd put out years ago under a different name-Emelia Sparrow.

Who _was_ this stranger?

She certainly wasn't the inspiration behind my homoerotic debut novel, _Once Upon A Fuck._

I forget exactly how many years ago, I fell in love with Emelia Sparrow, who happened to hail from the same home state as I. I fell for the cotton candy pink stories of romance and fantasy between women that she wrote-women whose families embraced them, who swung swords at monsters that weren't human, and who lived fairy tale happily-ever-afters.

I suppose I fell in love with Emelia and just assumed that Emma must be a heroine like her lead characters. So after I retired from playing the political game and divorced my husband at long last, I Googled Emelia Sparrow and found her real name.

I remember that night well, even as other memories fade. Doctors had put the second stent in my heart two hours before, and my grown son called to cry over the phone at the example my divorce set for his wife and daughter.

"I won't ever forgive you," he told me as I scoured an article from Vickers College about Emma Swan's 6-week, summer fiction and poetry master class.

 _...may lead to entrance into the Vickers MFA in Creative Writing program for qualified students…_

"That's nice, Henry, dear," I replied, mouse hovering over the sign-up button and to submit my 3 grand into cyberspace. "In any case, I do think I am moving back to Maine."

Words-the words from Henry's mouth and the words on the computer screen-were the key to my shackles. I hit the submit button and spread my wings.


	2. Chapter 2

**Pages from Regina's Capstone:**

THE 1ST STEP:

I packed my fleet of Louis Vuitton suitcases and had my brown leather steamers shipped north to the rose-covered cottage my realtor promised, "I'd absolutely _die_ for."

"I mean, really, Regina," he gushed on the phone, "you're just off the ocean and utterly minutes from Vickers College and the quaintest of downtowns. I'll call my guy and have him decorate every single inch just the way you like."

Days later, I stepped down the cobblestone path to the overly sweet stench of roses just past their prime, clenching the confirmation email from Vickers in one trembling hand. I had barely taken in the backyard view of lavender and honeysuckle from the large kitchen windows when my son rang.

"Mom, this is ridiculous," Henry argued, "just come home. I didn't mean what I said. Besides, remember what the doctors told you."

I swiped at imaginary dust on the granite countertops. "I have done things for you my entire life, Henry, dear. Now I am doing something for myself. I am going to receive my MFA, if it is the last thing I do."

"It's just a 6-week summer course, and you bought a house up there when the one you built here in Arizona is only two years old. You don't really think you're staying in Maine, do you? Are you out of your mind?"

"Getting there," I told him, "but before I am completely gone, I am going to show Emma Swan the royalty checks for the 7 thousand copies of _Once Upon a Fuck_ that I have sold and prove I belong in that MFA more than any of her literary snobs. And, _my dear_ , don't ever speak to your mother that way again."

I hung up before he could respond. I wished that for one minute my hands would stop shaking.

 _I still have time. I still have steps left to take._

 **Pages from Emma's Confession:**

"Regina, this is too much exposition."

"Too much _what_?"

"I mean you explain too much."

"But it's writing, is it not? I am explaining a story, aren't I?"

"You want to show, not tell."

"Telling, showing, it all looks like black marks on a creamy page when it's in print, am I right? Or have you forgotten what it feels like to hold a newly published book in your hands?"

"Regina-"

"My dear, Emma, which one of us sold over 7 thousand copies of her first novel in less than 1 year?"

"Technically this is 100 pages, so you wrote a novella, Regina, not a novel. To qualify, a novel must be at least 120 pages and-"

"I came to this master class to find where Emelia Sparrow has been hiding for the past decade, not to take orders from Professor Emma Swan. Where is the woman who wrote _this_? Can I meet the soul of the person hiding behind tenure?"

#

 _When Regina brandished one of my old novels like a weapon, my vision tunneled and turned scarlet, my eyes locking on that dog-eared book. I could smell the old, yellowed pages from where I stood. I saw ink scribbled in the margins as the older woman flapped the novel in the air like a bird._

 _My face flamed. Something raw and aching birthed inside me, something that had tried to announce its presence and claw its way free from my grip on Vickers for many years now._

 _No, I wouldn't let it out._

"The person who wrote that trash doesn't exist anymore," _I said, words clipped._

 _I turned my back on her, the Evil Queen, for the rest of the class._

 _Days passed with my novels on Regina's desk, her manicured fingernails tapping on the covers. I heard her scream more, more, MORE, even when her scarlet lips with the small scar from cleft-palate surgery remained still._

 _I wondered madly which of my other students over the years knew about my pseudonym, my secret, silenced identity. Then, I would go home at night, lie in bed in my stockings, and replay our conversations behind closed eyes._

 _Regina...she barged into a room full of squares with soft edges, people who need keyboards and pens to speak, infinite clones of the students who came before them, who all think that if they copy and converge the styles of enough authors from over the ages, they will be the next Great American Voice._

 _Before Regina came to class that first day (late), I'd already heard from the Voice of Boredom, the Voice of Stuffed Shirts, and the Voice of Somnis. Pieces of my soul evaporated through the ceiling as I listened to them read. I imagined myself in some other place, though I didn't know where. I didn't know anything other than Vickers anymore._

 _Then, Regina threw open the double doors, her peacoat fanning, her salt and molasses hair shimmering on her shoulders like a headpiece, a crown. She entered like a stormcloud or an omniscient being. She slammed me out of a blurry space back into reality. She was magic._

 _"I'm here," she announced. And the whole world must have known it._

 _At home, in my bed, my mind would crackle after our exchanges._

 _"You do everything wrong," I wanted to scream. "All your characters sound like you. Your plots have holes-no, they have canyons. You place your punctuation_ outside _of your quotations, and yet, you've sold 7 thousand copies of_ Once Upon a Fuck _. How?"_

 _She made my chest vibrate and my ribs ache, but not because of her mistakes. She unleashed something like Pandora's Box in my classroom that first day. I was not the only one who felt it. My young, bespeckled students sat up straighter when she spoke, when she would read. And the sex she described, my god, she wrote sex scenes that were wet, lucid dreams._

 _She made people get up and leave._

 _While she was with me for the master class, her energy spread beyond Vickers, beyond Maine. The right person caught a whiff of her writing in New York City. The next thing I knew, a third of the way through the master class, she showed up early to my office with a printed copy of an email in her hand._

 _That morning, I saw the first fissure in her larger-than-life shield. Looking back, I should have realized then that she was dying._

 _"What do I_ do _, dear?" she asked me, eyes round. "About the agent?"_

 _"Come in, and sit down," I said._

 _She perched on the chair opposite mine, her Palazzo pants nearly brushing my beige skirt. When I saw us so close, something that felt like the colorful patterns on her trousers spiraled in between my legs. I had not felt desire in so long. My voice froze in my throat._

 _"Well, what is your advice, dear?"_

Emma _did not know what she was doing as my mouth moved._

 _But_ Emelia, _the writer I used to be_ , _leaked out of the hole that Regina had burned in my chest. And once she was loose, I didn't know if I would ever be able to contain her_ _again._

 _I realized then I was falling for Regina, caught in her magic spell. I could only wonder what in the hell I was doing and why in the hell it was happening._


	3. Chapter 3

**Pages from Regina's Capstone:**

THE 2ND STEP:

I put a copy of _Once Upon a Fuck_ on Emma's desk. It had disappeared-into the trash, for all I knew-by the time I went to her office hours to discuss The Agent's Email.

#

THE 3RD STEP:

I waited until after our last class session the week of The Agent's Email to invite Emma to coffee in the quaintest of downtowns.

While she chewed on her answer, I wondered, _Do you know how hard your jaw works while you think?_

The muscles rippled in her cheeks, toned from thought the way some people's brows wrinkle instead. She didn't know it yet, but growing older made her more beautiful. I wondered if she knew she spider webs of gray ran through the back of her stern, blonde braid.

"I suppose coffee would be appropriate," she finally replied.

She said it like a question as she stuffed papers into her gray messenger bag. She said it like an exchange, like I must want something.

I did. I wanted to crack open her head like a coconut to find that rich milk that had bathed the pages of her younger work and sustained me through a seawater marriage.

 _You kept me from drowning and drying out, Emelia Sparrow._

This woman in conservative, wallpaper clothing had tried to fade into herself, into the walls of this higher learning prison. Her new (unpublished) stories that she read to the class hit the palate as brittle and metallic as flecks of lead paint. She made my tongue recoil and lash out.

In fact, I wanted to lash at her until all of the chains of this Vickers place, of her need to be literary dropped off of her, and the goddess between the pages of her earlier work came back.

"Of course it is appropriate, dear," I scoffed, and she trusted my age and nodded.

#

Looking back at what I've written so far, perhaps it was selfish of me to think what I thought and to say the things I said.

But it's too late now.

All of the Steps have been taken, except for the final One, the one I've come to dread.

#

Emma and I went to coffee. Our fingers brushed over the creamer.

#

My ex-husband may read my capstone and think I tricked Emma into loving me, the same way I played the public in my political games. My son might read this and think I ran back to Maine to do something trite like _recapture my youth_ because he took too much of it and left me with nothing.

Neither are true.

To my ex-husband: the only one I tricked was myself. I spent the majority of my life in a hall of mirrors. In Maine, in this master class, I saw myself and everything I wanted clearly reflected for the first time.

My dears, everyone came out of the closet in the 2000s.

But the truth is, I didn't love Emma that day we first went to coffee. I loved the idea of the happily-ever-afters that Emelia told in the novels that I read while away on business trips or alone in my king bed.

As far from me as he could be, my husband would drink yet another finger of scotch in his leather armchair.

I don't blame him. We all have our ways of coping.

To be honest, in the beginning, I didn't think I could ever love Emma. I thought Emelia became an echo. In fact, maybe I made a mistake chasing book chapters halfway across the country from where I was supposed to retire and, subsequently…

But time limits and confined spaces mean inevitable closeness-those are laws of our physical universe.

After that first coffee, our fingers brushed again in class. Emma would catch me staring, or her gaze would wander the planes of my face. Her nervous, hot energy skittered like candy across the floor into my starving mouth. My presence made her hair follicles stand on end. Our arguments were chemical, heated. Her exposed clavicles turned pink when I raised my voice.

And when I looked at her bare skin and then back at her, there was intimacy, unexpected, I think, for us both.

But people are human. And people are animals. We are who we are. We need what we need. It's science, not magic.

A version of our story has happened a thousand of times, in more MFA programs and master classes than not. One might call it the culture of creativity, a habit, an expectation, a way to pass down the learning and rekindle a creative smolder into a spark.

Emma worked hard over the years to diminish her sexuality and draw a line against all of that. She swung from a lascivious extreme to the asexual, never landing in a comfortable middle, certainly not when it came to students, arguably not when it came to herself. I, on the other hand, after years of a cold bed, had become all about the erotic, at least the possibility, the fantasy, the _story_ of it.

We were both hungering for it in our different ways.

And we ate the coconut fruit hanging.

And the hot milk ran down our chins and our arched necks and our breasts.

And it was magic, not science.


	4. Chapter 4

**Pages from Emma's Confession:**

 _Before Regina came, every morning for years, my routine stayed the same. I rose at 4:45 am. I drank black coffee at 5:05 and read the cartoons and obituaries in our local paper before switching to The Times. Mr. Meowsy would cry for his Fancy Feast, while I cooked two eggs with a pinch of garlic salt hidden in the swallow, yellow folds._

 _Then came the second cup of coffee, the padding back to my teaspoon-sized room and to the shower that could never decide between Niagara Falls ice or Mount Vesuvius lava. I picked out a beige skirt from a rainbow of beige skirts, a white blouse-or perhaps a black one, if I felt properly melancholy-and locked my feet into Dr. Comfort shoes, instead of strapping on the heels I once rocked. My hair went back into a tight braid, and every morning I considered a haircut. Every evening I failed to follow through._

 _I wore tortoiseshell glasses before they came back into fashion. I carried the same gray leather messenger bag, since I burned the one from the era of my MFA._

 _Every day I hid in my third floor office with the one cracked window and the metronome beeping of the broken printer just outside my door. When students came to visit, their noses wrinkled as they looked around._

 _"How do you work with that noise?"_

 _"Is this what my office will look like?"_

 _Most of them came to complain about grades. A few wanted me to read the sci-fi and mystery droll they dared not turn into my classes. Fewer still over the years thought I might fuck them-those students I always referred to counseling services, the way someone should have done me when I was in college._

 _Instead when I received my degree, I funeral-marched across the stage, refusing to make eye contact with Professor Hook._

 _For three years, that man invited me for drinks in his office and cornered me at all of our program functions._

 _It's the damn 80s, he'd drunkenly reminded me once he had me. The students he taught now were the dregs of a better group of writers who'd come the decade before us. But not me. I was brilliant. I had a unique voice and an imagination like Atlantis._

 _"They all say it, that you'll be something someday," he would whisper in my ear, "the students and the faculty."_

 _Maybe he was right. I wrote things, and people published them._

 _"I'll help you make it big," he'd promise. "I know people in New York."_

 _Professor Hook taught me the three-act structure of a novel. He taught me how to curb my paragraph-long sentences and still create a scene. And he always carried a hundred dollar bill and a square mirror in his pockets._

 _His reflection would blur in the glass as I snorted fat lines of coke._

 _"Everyone does it," he would say, hands flicking almost effeminately when we were drunk and high and surrounded in the warm cocoon of voices at program functions._

 _My heart would be spinning like a top in my chest. Everything and everyone looked beautiful and strange through the kaleidoscope of drugs. I hung on the rope of his words, trying to seem more mature than 25._

 _I wanted to love this life._

 _"I'm tired," he would continue. "I'm tired of everyone getting high and fucking everyone. You'll do it, Emma, when you have students. It's just how these things go. You'll grow old and tired of it, too."_

 _He would take me to dinner when his wife visited her infirmed parents who lived across the country. He would insist I stay over those times, instead of invading my messy apartment or paying cash by the hour at Jin's Motel. When I spent the night, I would wake in a cottony, scratchy bed next to him where his hands crossed over gray chest hair and his empty eyes absorbed the ceiling._

 _He would be drunk by the time he finished making breakfast._

 _Whenever I had girlfriends or hooked up with girls that belonged to the cult following my books created, he insisted on meeting them. He would introduce himself to them as my mentor, as a sort of father figure._

 _I forget how many times I let him sleep with those girls who were too fucked up to say no. Halfheartedly, I would join in with my own sweating, gyrating flesh, wishing I could be at home, in my pajamas, knees up to my chest while I sat at the typewriter._

 _He dropped me for a shinier toy in my second to last semester when the faculty admitted an 18-year-old redhead with eyes so pale I could see through them to the unblemished vase of her soul._

 _I imagined I could see them fucking in the shadows my candles made, her raspy groans so quiet no one could hear her and no one would ever know about them but the three of us._

 _I don't even remember her name._

 _I only remember that the wish to be clean again struck me full-bodied, while I walked across the stage and accepted the prop diploma._

 _I just wanted to write. I just wanted to be alone._

 _So I moved to Maine where the winters kill everything. Souls. Colors. Creativity. Sex drive._

 _But Regina, God, she brought everything back to life._

 _Regina:_

 _I was dying. But it was Emma who had wanted to._

 _"I don't know what's happening," she whispered as she lay naked next to me, her hands clenched next to a heart beating so hard I could see it rise and fall under her translucent skin._

 _"What do you mean?"_

 _"I'm...happy."_

 _Morning sun tiptoed through the windows in my cottage bedroom, bringing with it the scent of lavender and honeysuckle. She took deep breaths with her eyelids fluttering. The spots of sunshine lit her dirty blonde hair on fire. Without my glasses on, she looked ethereal, otherworldly. She looked like the Emelia Sparrow from my lucid dreams._

 _"I feel like writing," she told me. "Maybe I'll write something for you, Regina."_

 _"I would like that."_

 _She took me by the palms. "Why are your hands shaking?"_

 _Her eyes were those of a child, and I felt wicked for trapping her in this cottage among all of these flowers and thorns. If I possessed any sort of real magic, it would have been to freeze time for all eternity before I had to answer._

 _"It's only hunger," I replied._

 _"Then I'll make us something."_

 _"Thank you, dear."_

 _She left my bedroom with the sheet around her waist. The smile on my lips felt pinched even to me._

 **Pages from Regina's Capstone:**

Emma came over the day I failed to make it to class.

"What's wrong?" She touched me all over with busy fingers. "Aren't you well? Should you see a doctor?"

It felt like minutes before I summoned enough air to speak. "Will you read to me?"

Mute, she nodded and pulled a stack of papers from her gray leather messenger bag. I caught a glimpse of the title.

"No, no, not that rubbish. Read me something beautiful-something from one of your novels, maybe?"

Her whole body hesitated. But she rose and retrieved one of the Emelia Sparrow books from the nightstand that I insisted stood on her side of the bed.

"Once upon a time-"

"Wait," I interrupted. "Will you take your hair out of that infernal braid? Maybe change into something more comfortable?"

"What do you suggest, Regina? I didn't exactly bring a change of clothes."

"Take something from my closet, then. Yes, the Milan robe."

She groused as she removed her white blouse, then her beige skirt.

"Leave your stockings," I suggested.

She tried to toss a distaining glance my direction, but it dissolved into a lopsided smile. She loved how demanding I was, how I always got what I wanted.

"There," I said, as she secured the robe around her body, "you look perfect."

"Are you done making requests now, Your Majesty?"

"Almost." I settled deeper into my pillows and allowed my eyelids to shut. "Will you start with the last page?"

I listened to the whir of pages as she flipped to the back of my well-loved copy. Then, there was a long stint of silence. I started to speak when finally she read the only line on that off-white page in a low, affectionate voice.

"…And they lived happily ever after."

I drifted off, smiling.


	5. Chapter 5 - END

**Pages from Regina's Capstone:**

I grew stronger for a time after that, and so did Emma. She would thumb through my closet without my prompting, then we spent the days left of summer having picnics at the beach, under a wide, private umbrella.

"You love the water, don't you?" she asked as we squished through the sand, hand-in-hand.

THE 4TH STEP:

"It's you I love."

"Regina...please…"

"Emma, dearest, have I ever asked you to say it back?"

"You love Emelia Sparrow."

"You _are_ Emelia Sparrow, and you are Emma Swan."

She denied it, though the walls she hid behind were breaking. She still hid in her long blonde hair, but I would catch the gleam of her white smile.

 **Pages from Emma's Confession:**

" _Maybe I will write you something."_

 _When I said that to Regina, I didn't mean this confession._

 _#_

 _There are no saviors, no Never-never Land of immortality, and there are no truly evil queens. I will never write again of that kind of black and white love, not even now that I have something to say after years of colorless silence._

 _There are no neat endings. Regina taught me that._

 _We all have to die sometime. We are bound to leave a knot or two untied._

 _For Regina and I, that knot turned out to be her capstone work._

 _My office sat vacant for the remainder of that summer she took my master class. Someone must have come in and seen her work-the wrong someone._

 _I have overcome the embarrassment of knowing all of the colleagues I tried to fool with my melancholy prose read what she wrote about my early days as a writer. I embrace that identity now. It's shaped me into the writer I am as I tell our love story._

 _I have overcome the shock of the lawyers showing up at my door the day after she died. I stepped out of the summoning circle of tissues that piled up around me to answer the incessant ringing of the doorbell. On either side of my apartment, my neighbors pounded on the walls. They didn't know it, but I wanted, needed, the void of silence far more than they._

 _I allowed the lawyers in without question._

" _Now, we aren't saying you did anything wrong, Miss Swan," they said. "We just need to get a few facts straight. Her son, Henry, he's threatening to sue the college."_

 _I hiccupped and muttered nonsense long enough for them to exchange glances and decide that, "Well, why don't you write everything down, Professor Swan? You do that sort of thing, right? Maybe it'd help you process."_

 _For long hours, the too-bright white of the computer screen taunted me. I didn't want to write any of it down._

 _I just wanted her to come back._

 _Not even Mr. Meowsy, who rubbed against my calves the entire time I sat like a statue with tears streaming, could soothe me anymore._

 _#_

 _A nurse called me from the hospital._

" _Ms. Mills had a piece of paper in her hand. I had a dickens of a time trying to pry it loose. I guess she really wanted us to call you."_

" _May I see her? Is she all right?"_

 _A thick pause. "You should come and see her. You're family, right?"_

 _I screeched into the hospital parking lot a half hour later. I all but ran through the sterile-smelling halls, my heart one step ahead of me, a bird beating against the cage of my ribs._

Faster, faster, go faster.

" _Regina."_

 _Inside her room, a heart monitor pumped out steady beeps. An oxygen mask over her mouth and nose dispelled the silence in the room._

" _Regina, please."_

 _I knelt beside her, pulling one hand from under the rough hospital covers. She felt cold. I looked down and saw the blood pooling in her fingertips._

" _Regina, no."_

 _I stood and took her by the shoulders. Her molasses hair shimmered under the harsh lights. She still wore kohl around her eyes. I could see her scarlet lipstick smeared under the clear. plastic mask._

 _Desperately, I wanted to kiss her, hold her, feel her, memorize all of her._

" _Regina, come back," I said. "Please, I love—"_

 _The heart monitor flat-lined before I could finish speaking._

"— _you."_

 _Before I could move, before I could think, someone in blue pulled me away._

 _I saw my tears trickling down Regina's cheeks. Then, a fence of people separated us. I clawed at them, as the bird inside me clawed against my bones._

" _Just let me kiss her," I screamed. "Just let me bring her back."_

 _Regina didn't need Emma. She needed Emelia to give her a happy ending. I cursed myself for being so tired and slow._

 _Instead, the door swung shut on me. The nurse who'd called took my arm, then my limp body._

" _It was her heart," she told me as she patted my back. "Didn't she tell you? It was weak."_

 _And the bird in my chest pecked at my insides until my own heart bled out._

 _#_

 _THE 5TH STEP:_

 _In her capstone, Regina failed to write the last step left to take._

 _Maybe it was to respond to the agent and move to New York City. Maybe it was to convince me to write again about women in love._

 _More likely, it was to show me the person I lost sight of so many years ago. Or it was to show someone—to show me—the person she'd become._

 _Regina failed the master class because she turned in an incomplete capstone work—20 pages shy of the novel assignment._

 _Vickers denied her entrance into the MFA, post-mortem. Fucking college processes. Professor Hook was right about one thing: I_ am _so tired of it all._

 _But fall classes start in a week._

 _#_

 _In my car, across the street, I watch the roses wilt at Regina's cottage. A For Sale sign mars the front lawn now. Closed blinds cut off the interior from outsiders peering in._

 _I hold a copy of_ Once Upon a Fuck _on my lap as I write my confession._

 _I can feel Regina within the pages. So maybe we writers are a bit immortal, after all. But it's not enough for me._

 _As for Regina's 5_ _th_ _Step, I suppose I will have to ask her about it when we meet again, if you believe in that sort of thing. In any case, I am…_

… _onto other things—_

 _Emma (Emelia Sparrow) Swan_

 **END**


End file.
